A Series Matter: Red Sox-Astros and Rebuilding_BINARY_1131785

THE CONTENTS: The Red Sox will play 16 of their next 19 games away from Fenway Park, starting with three at Minute Maid Park in Houston this week.

By Tim Britton

THE CONTENTS: The Red Sox will play 16 of their next 19 games away from Fenway Park, starting with three at Minute Maid Park in Houston this week.

THE EPIGRAPH: "Sometimes what's important is dull. Sometimes it's work. Sometimes the important things aren't works of art for your entertainment." --The Pale King, David Foster Wallace

THE EXPOSITION: The Red Sox embark on this 10-game road trip off a 5-2 homestand that saw them lose and then reclaim first place in the American League East. Boston is 68-45, percentage points behind Pittsburgh for the majors' best record, and in front by one in the division.

The Astros, on the other hand, are coming off a 2-8 road trip, capped off by a three-game sweep in Minnesota. Houston has the worst record in baseball again at 36-74, 4.5 games worse than the White Sox and 27.5 worse than the first-place Athletics. The Astros are on pace to lose 109 games.

THE PROTAGONISTS: The Red Sox did most everything right on their just-completed homestand. They hit one-through-nine in the order, with Stephen Drew emerging as a force in the final third of the lineup. Jake Peavy and Felix Doubront pitched well. Even when the starters didn't pitch well, the offense bailed them out with late comebacks. In the words of Lou Brown, it's startin' to come together.

The concern in this series, this road trip and this extended 16-on-the-road-in-19-games sequence is that you hit a little bit of a wall. The Sox won't have the hometown fans providing energy when they're down 7-1 in the eighth. They won't have the adrenaline and feel of a playoff game against Tampa Bay when they're facing off with the Astros.

Can Boston thus motivate itself? Can it avoid the pratfalls of a complacent trip that allows the Rays to get right back in front in the East?

THE ANTAGONISTS: The Astros remain a bad major-league baseball team, and this is not necessarily by accident. Houston traded two of its remaining big-league assets at the deadline in Bud Norris and Justin Maxwell, meaning its highest-paid current player is Erik Bedard, at $1.15 million this season. The only player with a set salary for 2014 is Jose Altuve, who will make less than $1.5 million in the first year of his four-year extension.

General manager Jeff Luhnow has attacked rebuilding in Houston as aggressively as it's ever been attacked before, tearing down the major-league roster in order to infuse what had been a depleted minor-league system. Their Triple-A team is in first. Their Double-A team is in first. Their High-A team is in first. Their Single-A team is in third, four games out of first. Their Low-A team is in first. Their system is light years better than it was when Luhnow took over two years ago.

The major-league team, though, is taking a beating for now. The Astros may challenge the 111 losses by the 2004 Diamondbacks for the worst record in a decade. They are on pace to lose at least 106 games for the third straight year -- something not done since the expansion Mets lost at least 109 in their first four years.

THE CONFLICT: Who will strike out more this week: Mike Napoli or Chris Carter?

THE STRIKEOUT RACE: Carter enters the series one strikeout ahead of Napoli for the league lead, 145 to 144. But, Carter has done that in 29 fewer plate appearances, so his strikeout rate is higher than Napoli's. (Carter has 29 fewer plate appearances than Napoli despite having only two fewer starts, by the way.)

Carter's on pace to finish with 213 strikeouts -- a full 10 shy of Mark Reynolds' MLB record.

Napoli's only on pace to finish with 206 -- 29 more than the Red Sox record, but only the sixth most all-time.

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT'S DUE: Bobby Bonds held the strikeout record for 34 years, from 1970 to 2004, at 189 Ks. Since then, it's been passed 13 times, as strikeouts have gone up throughout the game.

But Bonds is presumably still the leader in a hastily defined new stat I'll call Strikeout Rate+ (K%+). When Bonds set the record in 1970, teams struck out an average of 5.75 times per game. Bonds himself struck out 1.17 times per game, or 1.83 times the rate of the average hitter. This gives Bonds a K%+ of 183.

This year, teams strike out an average of 7.51 times per game. Carter strikes out 1.32 times per game, but that's only 1.58 times the league average (K%+ of 158). Napoli's K%+ is even better at 157.

When Reynolds struck out 223 times in 2009, his K%+ was 179.

So, without combing through the rest of history, it feels safe to call Bonds the winner.

WORTH MENTIONING: It's not just Carter. Houston has struck out 1,034 times as a team this season -- or 9.4 times per game. They 'Stros are on pace to shatter the team record for punchouts in a season with 1,522. Last year, Oakland set the record by striking out 1,387 times.

A COMMENT ON THE BALLPARK: I dislike it very much.

Bring back Harris County Domed Stadium!

A VERY LONG CRITIQUE OF HARRIS COUNTY DOMED STADIUM, FROM ROGER ANGELL AND THE MAY 1966 ISSUE OF THE NEW YORKER:

"Baseball is an extraordinarily subtle and complex game, and the greatest subtlety of all may well be the nature of its appeal to the man in the stands. The expensive Houston experiment does not truly affect the players or much alter the sport played down on the field, but I think it does violence to baseball -- and, incidentally, threatens its own success -- through a total misunderstanding of the game's old mystery. I do not agree with Judge [Roy] Hofheinz [earlier referred to as "the Kublai Khan of the domed stadium] that a ballpark is a notable center for socializing or propriety, or that many spectators will continue to find refreshment in returning to a giant living room -- complete with manmade weather, wall-to-wall carpeting, clean floors, and unrelenting TV show -- that so totally, so drearily, resembles the one he has just left.

"But these complaints are incidental. What matters, what appalls, in Houston is the attempt being made there to alter the quality of baseball's time. Baseball's clock ticks inwardly and silently, and a man absorbed in a ball game is caught in a slow, green place of removal and concentration in a tension that is screwed up slowly and ever more tightly with each little half-step with which the fielders accompany each pitch. Whatever the pace of the particular baseball game we are watching, whatever its outcome, it holds us in its own continuum and mercifully releases us from our own. Any persistent effort to destroy this unique phenomenon, to 'use up' baseball's time with planned distractions, will in fact transform the sport into another mere entertainment and thus hasten its descent to the status of a boring and stylized curiosity.

"I do not wish them luck with this vulgar venture."

A COMMENT ON THE ASTROS FAN BASE: I never understood their booing of Carlos Beltran. Dude was awesome for them. Kansas City traded him to Houston because he was going to sign with the highest bidder, and Houston then got upset he signed with the highest bidder.

LITTLE-KNOWN FACT: The 2004-2005 National League Championship Series between the Astros and Cardinals would be talked about a thousand times more if they didn't roughly overlap with the 2003-2004 ALCS.

Game Five of the 2004 NLCS was one of the best pitchers' duels you'll ever see, with each team having just one hit entering the ninth.

AN IDIOSYNCRATIC OPINION, SHARED BY NO ONE: Brandon Backe is one of the best postseason pitchers of all-time, if we consider the context of his regular-season performance.

(Backe's career regular-season ERA is 5.23; his career postseason ERA is 2.95.)

RECENT SERIES HISTORY: The Red Sox swept four from Houston at Fenway earlier this season, stretching Boston's winning streak over Houston to seven, dating all the way back to 2008.

The Sox are 4-2 all-time at Minute Maid Park.

WHAT THE (OTHER) LOCAL MEDIA IS SAYING: Crawfish Boxes
compares Cosart's first four starts to those of one-time Reds wunderkind Wayne Simpson.

PREDICTION TIME: Jarred Cosart pitching to Jarrod Saltalamacchia is going to lead to some typos.